Chasing Cars
by evieeden
Summary: Tony deals with the aftermath of flying through the portal with Pepper's help. Advent/A-Z fic for 3rd December.


**And here's my advent/A-Z fic for 3rd December. This one's a Tony/Pepper fic, cos I love them together.**

 **C: Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol**

 **Anyway, I own nothing to do with Marvel, and I very much hope you enjoy reading this.**

 **Chasing Cars**

It was amazing in some respects, just how small they were in the grand scheme of things.

Here humans were, buzzing around on their tiny planet, building things and then tearing them down and starting again; thinking they were so clever and important with their taming of fire, the wheel, gunpowder, governments and nuclear weapons.

They were so stupid. So pathetic.

Tony knew that now.

Sure he had known before that there were strange forces in the world – aliens could crash land in the New Mexico desert, Nazi scientists could develop weapons that melted their faces of and science could transform ordinary men into super soldiers and rage monsters. None of that screamed normal to him… not that he had much of a benchmark for normal in the first place.

But what was out there… what was waiting for them on the other side of the void – waiting to claim their fragile world for itself…

It was terrifying.

Beautiful and vast and empty and full and wondrous and terrifying all at the same time.

Tony hadn't known what to expect when he flew that nuke through the portal – there hadn't been much time for stopping to reflect on what he was doing. He just reacted. If questioned beforehand, he probably would have imagined it to just look like space, like one of those grainy images NASA released every now and then with a few twinkly lights in the background. Instead he had seen an endless chasm, filled to the brim with raving Chitauri warriors.

And entire alien warrior race just waiting to subdue and destroy them all.

It was enlightening. It was overwhelming.

He was scared.

He couldn't admit it, of course – not out loud anyway – but he suspected Pepper knew anyway.

After Afghanistan, he had done his best to make the world safe, to keep his people safe, but after New York, a small part of his brain knew it wasn't possible. He could try as hard as he could, design as many Mark suits as his brain could conceive, update JARVIS as fast as his fingers could fly, but he would never be able to protect everybody.

Hell, he couldn't even protect Agent.

If he couldn't protect someone who was trained to survive then how was he meant to protect someone who wasn't. How was he supposed to protect Happy or Rhodey…

 _Or Pepper._

He needed to be better - work better, train harder and perfect the suits, because if he could do that, then maybe he'd have a small chance of protecting something…anything…

He needed to keep them safe. His people. He _needed_ to.

His job would be a little easier though if the Mark XLI hadn't just self-combusted though, sending shards of burning metal cascading across the room and forcing Dum-E to cover everything in foam from the fire extinguisher.

God, he needed a drink.

He was lying on the foam-covered floor, whiskey in hand when he heard the familiar clicking sound of Pepper's heels on the steps to the workshop. There was a brief pause when she reached the bottom.

"Oh Tony."

He blinked up at her and grinned blearily.

She was wearing a white suit – her CEO suit, he noted, that she wore whenever she had a board meeting – and was balancing on a pair of nude-coloured heels that he had bought her for her birthday from Italy.

"Pep! You're here."

She gifted him a weak smile and then raised her eyes to survey the state of the room. "What happened?"

He waved a hand dismissively. "Minor issue with the cooling system. I'll fix it later. Just waiting for Dum-E to clean up the shop so I can start again."

She didn't look reassured. "Tony…"

"It's fine, really," he rushed to reassure her. "It's more than fine. It's the resistance. It's not up to scratch yet. I'm thinking I need something more durable – titanium, maybe – to increase the durability. If I find the right combination of… Hey!"

His ramble was interrupted when she bent over and removed his drink from his hand. He would have protested more, but he seemed to be stuck to the floor. He eyed the fire extinguisher warily. Dum-E had clearly put something in there, something capable of pinning him down to the floor.

Pepper set the glass on the side of the bar and then turned back to Tony.

"When was the last time you slept?" she asked.

Tony shrugged petulantly. He knew how this worked. This was the trick she used to pull back when she was his PA and he wouldn't give in.

She sighed heavily and pushed a loose hair behind her ear. "Jarvis?"

"Oh, now that's cheating," he protested.

"Sir last slept 53 hours ago," his AI helpfully informed her.

"Et tu, Brute?" Both Pepper and Jarvis ignored him.

"Sir is also experiencing high levels of melatonin indicative of extreme exhaustion and has inadvertently caused three combustible incidents in the last six hours."

Pepper rubbed a hand tiredly across her forehead. "Tony…"

He needed to stop her there before she could say anything. "Pep, don't. I need to do this. And I'm fine, really. I need to make the suits better, so that we can be safe. We need to be safe." Even he could hear the desperation in his voice, so it must have been plain to head for her. Still, if he could just make her _see_. "You understand, don't you?"

She didn't reply, just stood there, poised and beautiful – the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life – with one hand over her mouth and tears shining brightly in her eyes.

"Pep – you _do_ understand, don't you?"

She swallowed and then nodded silently, offering a tremulous smile. "I understand."

"Good." He reclined his head back.

"That's doesn't mean that you don't need to go and get some sleep though," she interjected.

He tried to glare at her, but it was a half-hearted effort at best.

"I will," he promised rashly. "Just…come lie with me for while." He held out a hand beseechingly, not expecting her to take it.

But God bless her, she did.

She kicked off her heels, shrugged out of her jacket and kneeled down before lying next to him in that pristine, white suit, uncaring of the grease and debris and foam she was now coating herself with. Leaning over, she rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm carefully across his chest as he gathered her in closer.

This was it. This was where she needed to be: close to him so that he could protect her.

"I'll get some rest in a minute," he stated. "Let's just stay here for a while."

"Okay," she agreed softly. "We'll stay here for now."

His arms tightened around her. She held him just as closely.


End file.
